


Average Citizens of Crystal City

by spaceboye



Category: Crystal City Tales - Original Work, Original Work
Genre: Gender-Neutral Pronouns, M/M, Magical Realism, No Dialogue, No Plot/Plotless, Other, POV Second Person, Prompt Fill, Slice of Life, Tumblr Prompt, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 13:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14570091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceboye/pseuds/spaceboye
Summary: A sort of meandering piece running through a day in the life of your average Crystal City resident. Second-person POV with gender neutral pronouns. Mostly wrote this to get some basic worldbuilding in order.Prompt fill: worldbuilding-question [.] tumblr [.] com/post/172059059743/





	Average Citizens of Crystal City

The first thing you notice as you wake up is a pebble digging into your back. Without a second thought, you toss it to the other side of your home. It kicks up a little dust as it lands. There’s light filtering in from your window-- a single square of thick, bubbly glass near the ceiling. Somewhere, a rooster cries out as if to challenge the sun itself. It’s time to start the day.

As an average citizen of Crystal City-- the largest settlement in the world of Sunder-- you own a single-room unit in a reasonably clean part of the city. If you had more money, you might live closer to the city center, in a much larger house with a walled-off yard and livestock.

You do not have more money, so you, your spouse, and your two children share this room with a lazy old cat.

The house isn’t unbearably small, but it’s certainly small enough that your family spends most of their time elsewhere. The walls and ceiling are mudbrick, the same as every other house in the city (with the sole exception of the palace).

After nudging your family awake, the four of you roll up the straw mats you sleep on and shove them in the corner. You have a single magelight to illuminate your house-- a round stone which one of the local mages enchanted to give off a soft, clear light when touched. You save that for the evenings, because it costs a couple silvers to have it recharged, and you’re currently saving every copper you can for some better gardening equipment. The last tomato harvest wasn’t great; you have your eyes on a new water barrel and a trowel to replace the one your youngest child broke last week.

Anyway, by the light permeating your window, you take a small jug of milk from the icebox (another mage-invention that has taken off in the past few decades) and a bowl of oats that was left to soak on the counter overnight. The neighbors invited your family for breakfast this morning. You’re bringing porridge ingredients, and they’re providing vegetables and sausage.

Your oldest child finishes sweeping stray bits of straw and dirt out the front door. The younger child gleefully pets the cat (which absolutely basks in the attention) until it’s time to go.

Your spouse grabs a bowl of berries, and you each take one of your children’s hands and lead them down the mudbrick staircase next to your house. You live on the second floor, and work in the store below. It’s not time for work yet, though.

All around you, people are beginning to fill the streets between the rows of square buildings. Early risers trudge off to their jobs: repairing walls, running stores, transporting goods around the city, and whatever else needs doing. These people likely woke hours ago, and likely won’t find their beds again for hours to come.

As you ascend the stairs on the side of your neighbor’s house, your children wave at a neighborhood friend, who waves back before running down a side street, probably on their way to deliver a letter. It’s not uncommon for children to be paid a copper or two to run a message across town, and most accept the errands with a smile. A copper or two now can mean a handful of candy later.

You knock on the neighbor’s wooden door, and their son answers with a grin. Your family is ushered in by a plump man with a thick, curly beard and rich brown skin. Mornings such as this one are always very cheerful events. The neighbor’s husband, a rather tall, shy man with a handsomely broad nose, is already frying sausages over the hearth. You join him to cook the oats for porridge while your spouse and his set ceramic dishes on the low table next to the fire. The children alternate between helping with one or the other task; your eldest takes a bucket and runs off to the nearby well.

Before long, the air is thick with the scent of meat and zucchini. Both families eat breakfast between jokes and anecdotes, and when you finally leave, it is with a full stomach and a promise to meet up again soon.

You return home. The morning is well underway now, and your spouse kisses your lips briefly before heading up to the roof-garden. Your children grab apples from a bowl on the table and rush out the door. They have school in the mornings at the nearest temple of the gods. Classes on writing, arithmetic, and crop growing are offered free to anyone, young or old, who wishes to learn.

In the meantime, you wash the bowl from breakfast, then head down the hatch in the room’s back corner. The ladder there takes you to the first floor, where you work. Here, you make and sell gloves. Some are leather, some are knitted wool, and still others are delicate pieces of fine linen and lace.

Throughout the day, you knit and sew and embroider, and you chat with customers who browse over your wares. Haggling is expected. You always offer a warm cup of tea to the people who wander into your shop, and most of them accept. Occasionally someone will come in just for a moment, or a courier-child will rush in with a slip of paper from some regular or businessperson or noble with a previous order. Business runs as smoothly as can be expected.

Just before midday, your spouse comes downstairs, finished with the day’s gardenwork, and heads out to the local temple with a kiss. The rest of their day will be spent aiding the Vibrant Ones as they maintain the temple, teach and collect alms for the poor, and study various holy texts.

Lunch is taken when the sun reaches its zenith, with none of the deliberateness of breakfast. A meal of soft cheese and dried, seasoned mutton on a slice of crusty bread, and then it’s back to work.

As the dimly-burning sun begins to lower in the lilac sky, your children run into the store. They chatter about the day’s lessons and the antics of their friends. The younger child joins you in knitting a custom order, while the older sweeps the floors and stands by the open front door, calling out to the city about the quality of your goods.

People walk past your shop all day. Your family lives on a fairly busy street, a direct offshoot of one of the main roads that leads from the Palace out towards the various farming settlements outside the city-state. Throughout the day, you see scruffy children playing in the crowds, holy women and men bringing blankets to those who sleep outside (the weather has been cooling), noble folk in their mage-driven carriages, and many, many laborers going to and fro.

The average laborer wears much the same clothing as you and your spouse: rough canvas trousers and shirts, with perhaps a splash of bright color in the form of a belt or bracelet, and simple leather shoes with wool socks. Decorative hair ribbons are in fashion lately, and are worn by people regardless of age or gender. In the winter, you switch from canvas to wool, and in the spring and summer, you sometimes wear linen-- though truly fine linen clothing is usually reserved for special occasions, as it’s quite expensive.

As the sun begins to set and people begin trickling away from shops like yours and into their homes, taverns, and restaurants, you lock the front door and head upstairs once again. Dinner is a much more controlled affair than breakfast or lunch were.

The children help you roast some lamb neck over the hearth, along with plenty of squash and onions. A loaf of bread is taken from the icebox and set on the table. The cat snoozes on the floor, its belly full of the mice and small birds it hunted through the day.

Your spouse comes home just as the lamb finishes cooking, and the four of you sit on old, well-worn cushions around the low table. You pray over a lit candle-- for a vibrant and peaceful life-- and then dig in.

After the dishes and the youngest child have both been washed (in a basin of well-water; you can’t afford the fancy new water pumps the wealthier families have started adopting. thankfully each house is legally required to have a simple toilet on the bottom floor), the somberness of dinner is washed away with a night of singing, storytelling, and for the children, drawing on the tabletop with bits of charcoal (easily buffed away with a cloth).

Everyone is tired. It’s been a busy day, as ever, so you bank the fire and pull your blankets and sleeping-mats from the corner, laying them out on the dusty floor.

Hopefully tomorrow will be just as average as today.


End file.
